As our beloved New England Patriots end their season with a disappointing loss to the Indianapolis Colts and returned to the safety of home and hearth, another set of American patriots remains in the deserts of Iraq losing their lives and fighting a war that never should have happened.

After one of the deadliest weeks for Americans (and Iraqis), and almost four years after President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished," there still remain 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground, with an additional 21,000 soon to arrive.

Like every week for the past 187 weeks since G.W. landed on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of combat operations in Iraq, more American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians continue to needlessly give their lives for no good reason. All the while, our national treasury gets emptied at a rate of $2 billion for each week we continue this insanity.

As one who never supported the war, even allowing for the legitimacy of the proponents pre-war claims (after all, we were able to "contain" the old Soviet Union without invading it), to now continue an occupation that keeps us in the midst of a burgeoning sectarian war between Shiites and Sunnis is absolutely criminal. With even some Republicans agreeing that the grounds for the original 2002 congressional authorization of the war in Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction, an alleged claim of Saddam Hussein's support of Al Qaeda -- are no longer applicable, there is building bi-partisan support to finally begin to check our own King George.

After the November election's clear mandate for change, and with recent polls showing support for the president at an all-time low, Republicans have finally decided their president's position is no longer defensible. What took them so long? For four-plus long years they have abrogated their oversight responsibilities and given Bush a blank check to do whatever he wanted -- our democracy and the Constitution be damned!

Now, even such hawks as Senator John Warner of Virginia, respected former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is joining other Republicans including Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, and Norm Coleman of Minnesota as they partner with Democrats in fashioning non-binding proposals that reject President Bush's plan to send more troops to Baghdad, while also demanding a change of course.

As symbolically important as these proposals are, however, they fail to do the only things likely to end this national and international nightmare. They all fail to call for the end of our occupation of Iraq, or the cutting off of funds to hasten that end. Indeed, even with these minimalist bi-partisan proposals, our monarchical president seems oblivious to the fact that he no longer has the American peoples' support for this misguided military debacle. Either that, or he simply doesn't believe he needs that support.

So how will President Bush be forced to bring our patriots home? The answer to that question will require the kind of political courage and leadership that has been, unfortunately, sorely lacking these last few years. Republicans for sure, and even most Democrats, remain too frightened to challenge the president with the only power they truly have to control this "decider" we call president.

Clearly, only when Congress accepts the reality that exercising their power of the purse and cutting off the funding for this war, will the needless killing and sullying of our reputation as a great nation end.

Stopping the funding for this evil occupation of Iraq is most certainly not a slap at the troops, as the few remaining Bush supporters will undoubtedly say, but rather a last ditch effort to save their lives from a needless death on the altar of George W. Bush's delusional, ego-driven war. Sadly, when the Commander-in-Chief will not accept the democratic will of the people, it is the only option available.

Leave it to our own Senator Ted Kennedy to put it succinctly, as he did recently while appearing on Meet the Press: "If we have a president that is going to effectively defy the American people, going to defy the generals, defy the majority of the Congress of the United States, Republicans and Democrats, then we, I think, have a responsibility to end the funding for this war."

For the sake of our country's soldier-patriots and for the sake of all those innocent Iraqis, let it happen sooner rather than later.